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Ready to upgrade from Oticon Opn 1. Should I select Oticon More or Phonak Paradise?

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You’re welcome, LaloPops©️

Once again, I sincerely wish you good luck … if your audiologist is any good, you two will find a solution that works for you.

Thanks for the many helpful responses. I really appreciate the willingness to provide such thoughtful and kind responses.

I’ve now moved on to the trial stage. I planned to start with the More, but my long time Audi was very excited about the brand new Signia Augmented Experience . It was launched 2 weeks ago so I haven’t found any reviews as yet. My Audi suggested I try the AX and report back to her since the More are currently only available only as rechargeable and I have doubts about that working well when I can return to international travel. The Signia is rechargeable only so far too, but it has a small travel charger and a quick supplemental charge option. OI can trade the AX for the More later if I want. I think I may ask to try the Phonak Paradise as well while I wait on the More. My Audi also says the More charger is larger and not as easily portable as the Signia one. She says I’m the most tech savvy in her client base ?! so I make a good test subject. I should get the HA in a few days, and I’ll report back.

I tried both Phonak Paradise 90 & bought Oticon More. I don’t know if I will have to buy Phonak tv connector or not.

They are very different regarding hearing. I loved the P90 but they were $4830 plus you have to fork out thousands more for the TV connector & Roger to hear voices directly in a crowd. The Roger was ON SALE for $1000 less at the time of promotion but still cost $1400 for that month only. Didn’t even ask how much the TV connecter is because I live alone & don’t care how loud it is anymore.

The Oticon More I bought for $3335 with a discount from employer paid perks spot benefit. They are good enough for $1500 savings to buy other things I want/need. In fact, everything seems louder than I’ve heard in a long time (12 years hearing aid use) previously had Audeo (12 yrs old) that cose me $5200!

The Oticon feel a little more comfortable and seems I can hear more so I’m happy. 3 year warranty instead of 1 yr but I did have to switch audiologists. Mine, who had taken care of me for 12 years only provide the “best” she said so I didn’t have any choice if I wanted a different brand.

I just hope 5-7 years from now when I need another new pair they are covered by insurance by then and/or come down to a reasonable price.

The Signia aids just arrived and I’ll be fitted on Monday, so I’ll report back.

About More’s charger : it isn’t that big that wouldn’t fit in your travel bag or pocket. You can charge from or USB. 30 mins charging gives 6 hours and 3 hours a full day (24 hours). If this is yours (or Audis) main concern I’m suprised.

Thanks, this is very helpful. I think my audi just wanted an excuse to get me to try the new Signia.

After the responses here, and discussing it with my techie husband, I’ve come to the conclusion that rechargeable will be a good choice for me - nearly or perhaps more convenient than changing batteries.

I get the new Signia rechargeable tomorrow which I’m looking forward to trying. But I suspect I’ll end up in Oticon More.

Yeah my audiologist was saying that Oticon have long overtaken Signia… but let us know what you think

Edited

In reply to @LawyerFL

@LawyerFL said:

After the responses here, and discussing it with my techie husband, I’ve come to the conclusion that rechargeable HA will be a good choice for me - nearly or perhaps more convenient than changing batteries.

I’m in your camp here with not wanting to fiddle with changing batteries every few days. You may not think much of it before, but once you’ve used rechargeable batteries, you start to see the convenience of just being able to take out the hearing aids at night and flop them into the charger and that’s it. With the disposable batteries, you get the low battery warning chimes, always have to keep fresh batteries nearby, swap batteries every few days.

The worst is having them run low at the most inopportune time in the middle of the day when you’re at work or in a meeting. Yeah you do get a low battery warning chime, but then if you can’t get out of your meeting or are having a face to face and must put up with and ignore the incessant warning chimes, and maybe even diminished performance due to weak batteries, until you can break off from your conversation and replace them, it’s just a drag when that happens. And you have to stock spare disposable batteries everywhere, at home, at work, in the car, in your pocket/wallet/purse.

But anyway, there’s already a whole big thread about pros and cons of rechargeable vs disposable so I’ll stop beating on that dead horse here.

Edited

image image

These screen shots are the norm for me. Now that I have used Oticon’s version of rechargeable , I won’t be returning to disposables.

[EDIT/Addendum: I apologize for the redundancy of the ON screen shots. I had forgotten about my earlier post. I think I’ll let this last addition stand, just as a demonstration of consistency.]

I was fitted earlier this week with the Signia AX, the new hearing aid released just a month or so ago. My audi wanted me to try them, thinking they had features I would really like for noisy situations. I still plan to try the Oticon More (I have the OPN 1 now) and Phonak Paradise.

As to the Signia AXt, I am very impressed after a few days of wearing them. Note that not yet performed. First some details on features. These are available now only as rechargeable, but they have 3 rechargers to choose from, the travel charger (the one I have, nice and small), a larger desk top type charger, and the charger which also has a dryer.
Signia claims to have a new way to program the AX to help with signal to noise, using two streams of sound and applying different approaches to each (go look it up if you need more tech explanations!).

The App is a real strengh compared to Oticon. You can adjust both volume and treble/bass, and directional hearing. For directional hearing, you choose to hear one or more of the 4 directional quadrants, or how narrow for frontal direction. I can’t tell this does much for me, but looks very cool! I’ll try it out some more.

My audi gave me 3 programs to start (I think you can have 6). I have Universal, Noisy Environment and Induction Loop mT.

The best feature of the app is the Signia Assistant. It starts by asking if it can help with
*My own voice
*Other voices
*Sound quality
*Handling

Once you select one, you get additional choices. Under Other Voices, you now choose
*Voices in general
*Loud or close voices
*Soft or distant voices
*Voices from the back.

In a loud restaurant, very busy and bad acoustics, I chose Voices in General. I was then asked
How does speech in general sound:
*Incomprehensible
*Too soft
*Sharp
*Too Loud

I chose incomprehensible and got back “program update” saying the assistant applied a setting to my device that “should make other voices a bit better comprehensible” (comment by me - the app’s English could be improved). I could Keep, Revert, Improve further.

I could immediately tell there was a program update, and I sometimes kept it and sometimes reverted. I tried various options as you see how vague some of these options are. But after a few tries, I was hearing much better at the loud restaurant!

The assistant also helped with a noise fan in another restaurant.

I found the Noisy Environment program very helpful with loud in my car, but not as good in other noise compared to the Universal program as modified by the Assistant.

Last night I was in a noisy bar for an art exhibit, and heard much better than with my Opn 1.

So for now, since I can’t compare to the More or Paradise, I am very impressed by the AX.

If my impression changes by further use, I’ll update this report.

@LawyerFL said:

Last night I was in a noisy bar for an art exhibit, and heard much better than with my Opn 1.

This is great to hear. The more good choices the consumers have available to them to choose from, the more the consumers win.

I wonder when you said you could hear much better in a noisy bar with the Signia than the OPN 1, are your referring to hearing speech conversation? Or just overall hearing?

I would say that the open paradigm of Oticon is a trade-off in a way. Yeah, you get to hear more most of the times, but sometimes you don’t want to hear more, especially in noisy places. Yeah, they give you a Full Directional setting in the OPN 1 to match the traditional noise blocking approach, but I really can’t find much difference using it because it doesn’t block the noise aggressively enough. The OPN S and the More make this option more explicit through the Sound Booster in the ON app. But it still gives mixed result. Some people could tell a big difference, others can’t tell much difference. But at least it’s something the original OPN doesn’t have.

In reply to @Volusiano

@Volusiano said:

I wonder when you said you could hear much better in a noisy bar with the Signia than the OPN 1, are your referring to hearing speech conversation? Or just overall hearing?

I could hear speech better from those I was sitting with and those I talked to as I walked around to see the art.

Signia AX trial. FYI, These are rechargeable and after 15 hours, about 4 streaming, my are still 60% charged.

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